Wikipedia says the public, not the photojournalist, owns the rights to ape's pic.

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An English nature photographer is going ape over Wikipedia's refusal to remove pictures of a monkey from the online encyclopedia that he says are being displayed without his permission.

Wikimedia, the operation that runs Wikipedia, says that the public, not photojournalist David Slater, maintains the rights to the works. That's because the black macaca nigra monkey swiped the camera from Slater during a 2011 shoot in Indonesia and snapped tons of pictures, including the selfie and others at issue.

"We received a takedown request from the photographer, claiming that he owned the copyright to the photographs. We didn't agree. So we denied the request," Wikimedia said Wednesday in its transparency report.

The picture is among the thousands the site makes available for free under its Wikimedia Commons, a fact that Slater says is costing him royalties. The picture went viral in 2011 when the media reported on the selfie. "He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn't worked that out yet," Slater toldThe Telegraph in July 2011 as he described the monkey hijacking his gear.

The image has at times been removed from the Wikimedia Commons by various site editors.

"If the monkey took it, it owns copyright, not me—that’s their basic argument. What they don’t realize is that it needs a court to decide that," Slater told the Telegraph Wednesday.

Slater said the picture should not be in the public domain. "They've got no right to say that it's public domain. A monkey pressed the button, but I did all the setting up," he said.

But Wikimedia countered, saying, "To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they'd only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image. This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain."

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets

Just in case there's still any doubt about the relevant jurisdiction, the photographer said:

Quote:

I’ve contacted a lawyer in the U.S. who is willing to take on the case they’re just waiting for my go ahead.

It's not yet clear whether or not the copyrights passed US Copyright Office registration, my guess is that's what he's waiting on. They do mention statutory damages.

Yeah, so it seems unlikely that the original takedown request was a US DMCA request, since the photographer is only just now looking at US legal action. It does seem that going forward, any legal action will be done within the jurisdiction of the US.

Yeah, so it seems unlikely that the original takedown request was a US DMCA request, since the photographer is only just now looking at US legal action.

Why would you jump to that conclusion?

Well, because he said he hasn't made any US legal action yet, and a DMCA request would be considered a US legal action. Also, Wikipedia's disclosure page didn't list this dispute under DMCA requests, but instead put it with other international takedown requests.

Finally, you yourself stated that he's likely waiting on his US copyright registration. If true, that means he couldn't have filed a DMCA request, since US law requires a copyright be registered before one can pursue legal action, including a DMCA request.http://www.lexology.com/library/detail. ... 05c71c6d54

Edit: Ultimately though, it doesn't matter, since it seems clear that going forward, the jurisdiction will be the US and thus US copyright law applies, although I don't think the differences between UK and US law were enough to make an impact in the merits of the case anyway.